With 25 members, 20 languages and hundreds of possible permutations, the EU is becoming a world leader in the art of interpretation
WITH 25 member states in the European Union, 20 official languages, and about 50 meetings taking place each day in Brussels and elsewhere, interpreters play as important a role in the EU as the flint plays in the tinderbox.
The Directorate General for Interpretation (DG Interpretation) in the European Commission is the largest interpretation service in the world and works for the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and other European bodies.
The service seeks to give everyone in the EU a voice in their own language. “The interpretation services provide the possibility of everyone to participate in decision-making regardless of language skills”, said Ian Andersen, Head of the Communication and Information Unit at the DG Interpretation.
The total cost for DG Interpretation in 2004 was 108 million euros, or 0.23 cents per citizen of the enlarged Union. With increasing interpretation services, the costs are projected to increase to 238 million euros by 2007-2001.
The most represented language among the 10 newest member states is Polish, with a total of 102 interpreters, including freelancers. With the exception of Maltese, which only has eight total interpreters, the other new languages have between 46 and 85 interpreters.
Andersen told the Sunday Mail that they currently have about 80 Greek interpreters as staff and freelancers.
Andersen said that most of the Greeks live in Athens and commute to Brussels for freelance work: “Many Greek interpreters come to Brussels, work here for ten years, and then find it’s nicer to live in Greece. So they go back home and return as freelancers.”
Andersen said that the history of Greek interpreters illustrates how long it takes to expand interpretation services in a language. “It’s one of those languages where we have a chronic shortage. In 25 years we have gone from eight to 80. It gives you an idea of how relatively complicated it is to get the right numbers of people.”
Andersen noted that much of it depends on the effort made by the country in its recruitment effort and in the training programs offered.
Cyprus does not offer any training courses in interpretation, which may explain why there are only a handful of Cypriots working for the European Commission in interpretation.
Conference interpreters are trained for three main types of work: consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, and whispering.
In consecutive interpreting, the interpreter sits with delegates, listens to a speech, and then renders it in full at the end of the meeting in a different language.
In simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter works in a soundproof booth, listening to the speaker who is in the meeting room through a headset. The interpreter then simultaneously renders the speech into a different language. Delegates in the meeting room can then listen to the speech on headsets in the language of their choice by selecting the appropriate channel.
Whispering is, as its name plainly suggests, a low-tech form of simultaneous interpreting in which the interpreter renders the speech directly into the listener’s ear.
Interpretation should not be confused with translation. “It’s not a straight repetition of what was said”, said Andersen, “but rather a transmission of ideas into a new language.”
Andersen said that, unlike parroting, the more artistic form of interpreting involves making adjustments for linguistic differences between languages, so that traces of German grammar, for example, do not come through into English.
“You have to think of interpreters also as cultural mediators”, Andersen said. “It is very much also an issue of bridging cultural barriers.”
The dinner speech is often the most challenging line of work for a translator, as the topic of conversation can go anywhere, including into country-specific subjects that are not easily rendered into other languages, like bullfighting or cricket jargon. “We actually have a training tape on cricket metaphors”, Andersen said.
Andersen described a worst-case scenario in which a Minister made a joke at a dinner party that was incomprehensible to the translator:
“So then you have to say to the guests, ‘All right, he’s said a funny joke, and I don’t understand a bit of it, so please laugh now.’ And that usually gets everyone laughing, and the Minister is pleased because they laugh, so everyone is happy.”
“We usually try to be more elegant than that, but sometimes you can’t avoid it.”
Because the work is so challenging, most interpreters work in their mother tongue. Often an interpreter isn’t available to render directly into the desired language, so a relaying system is established in which one person interprets into a language that another interpreter can then render into the desired language.
Interpreter Brian Gentle described how he and a colleague had to relay while interpreting for Russian President Vladimir Putin at an EU Summit at The Hague. “We were relaying in both directions. We were doing Russian into English, which was then translated into Dutch because the Dutch colleagues didn’t have Russian, and we were doing Dutch into English, which was translated into Russian because the Russian colleagues didn’t have Dutch.”
“My colleague has been speaking Russian since he was a baby more or less, and I have strong Dutch since my mother is Dutch. So we played to our strengths, which is important in a meeting that is as politically ticklish as a summit.”
“If you’ve got a good interpreter who reformulates well and gets the idea absolutely straight, then the other interpreter finds it very easy to render that,” interpreter Anne Ford told the Sunday Mail.
“Sometimes it’s so beautifully shaped for you, you can put it into a nice structured version for your audience and you won’t lose that much. You might lose an adjective but you won’t lose the ideas, which is what really matters.”
Gentle said that officials are increasingly reading their speeches, instead of speaking directly. “The Council of Ministers is becoming more and more formal and flat. Everything is read out. In the old days, the Agriculture Council used to have real fights.”
Ford said that interpreting readers is particularly difficult. “You’re reading as well as listening, translating, and trying to reproduce the words. And then they go at the wrong pace or skip out a sentence and we lose it. If they’re not thinking themselves, which they’re not when they’re reading, then we can’t follow their train of thought. It’s much easier if people are thinking and telling a story and explaining.”
“Of course, there are times when you’re a bit thrown by a particular word or concept, but you must not let that get in the way of keeping going”, Ford said. “Don’t panic. Drop a detail. Keep going. Pare it down. Like in journalism – short sentences.”
An interpreter must also be quick-thinking and wily so as not to get into a dangerous bind. Gentle described how he once was rendering the speech of a Russian poet, when the poet announced that he would now read some of his poetry.
“And I said, ‘I’m sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you’d like to hear this in the original,’ and I switched my microphone off.”
The 20 Official Languages of the EU
Spanish, Danish, German, Greek, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, and Slovene.
Following an Agreement with Committee of Permanent Representatives of EU member states (COREPER) Irish will become the 21st official langu
age beginning January 1, 2007. The Irish government will pay for the training of the translators and interpreters and for all related services, estimated to total 3.5 million euros.
